Wednesday, January 23, 2008

CP: Which current presidential candidate would you most want on your pub quiz team?

KJ: If spouses can play too, I have to go Hillary here. She’s bright herself, of course, but I was pretty impressed by Bill Clinton’s puzzle acumen in that crossword documentary Wordplay. If spouses can’t play, then Obama or McCain … probably Obama. I’m a teetotaler myself, so we wouldn’t even need Romney as a designated driver. Can you imagine playing with Huckabee? What if there were science questions? ‘No, no, it’s a trick question! There were no such thing as dinosaurs! The earth is only six thousand years old!’"

Sunday, January 06, 2008

I know the first episode of The Wire's final season leaked the other day, but I waited it out until tonight. There's just something exciting and ephemeral about catching a show you love on its initial broadcast, especially in the TiVo Age.

Back on the joyously revived Heaven and Here, contributor christycash kills itwith this analysis of an all-too-familiar axe ground by several characters in the premiere — the assertion that Baltimore's funding crisis (OT pay for police withheld to bandage a ballooning education deficit), lack of resources (cops driving clunkers), and, in the one Sun reporter's eyes, the "shit news town's" lack of reportable stories — can be uniformly blamed on the fact that it's not a real city. Because real cities crap out budget surpluses halfway through their morning coffee, keep spotless ledgers and are always, always equipped to provide you with what you need to do your damn job. Funny, I know.

Since I grew up in the greater Bmore area (burbs to the death...not trying to front like I was neighbors with Wee-Bey), relocated to Philly and, you know, work, I'm familiar with the inert, lackadaisical paranoia spurred by East Coast urban belt-tightening. (I have a feeling that "do more with less" will gestate into a resentful mantra, in more ways than one, this season.) But cash's point is that we shouldn't feel special for realizing that shit sucks, because everyone else on the planet is knee-deep in it, too:

McNulty had a line about how he wonders what it’s like to work for a “real” police department; eager beaver ladder climbing reporter boy had his own quip about working at a “real” paper. They see their situation as a kind of referendum on how shitty Baltimore is. But it seems to me that the cutbacks they’re dealing with are the rule, not the exception. They are interpreting a mass breakdown of urban infrastructure as local.Of course, when you’re in Baltimore or Philly or wherever you’re going to long to get out and get someplace where the trains run on time. But the trains don’t really run anywhere anymore.

Dead on. Keep an eye out for one Mr. David Simon in the comments section.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Blurb on the cover of a promo copy of CéU's self-titled American debut:

Just when you think that Brazil must surely have exhausted its supply of jazzy, funky, sexy, soulful electro-pop singer-songwriters, someone like CéU comes along and irresistibly mixes samba, reggae, dub, electronica and soul music and makes you think that maybe that particular well is bottomless after all.

Thanks?

Portuguese is a gorgeous language, but I recently decided that learning it would be impractical since it's spoken only in Portugal, Brazil and in a few African countries, like Angola and Mozambique. Of course, this conclusion is on par with me deciding that it would be impractical for me to play two guard for the Chicago Bulls, insomuch as neither would ever happen even if I wanted them to. Yes, I am very boorish and American. But I have kicked around the thought of maybe possibly purchasing Rosetta Stone — the Spanish edition — a few times.